Ending Unpaid Internships - New College of Florida

ISTOCK/GETTY IMAGES PLUS

Data show that students of color are less likely to have any internships, paid or unpaid.

Internships tend to advantage students who are already advantaged—essentially those who can afford to work for cheap or free.

According to data from the National Association of Colleges and Employers 2021 Student Survey, 74 percent of white students said they’d had unpaid internships and 73 percent had paid internships, compared to 8 percent and 6.6 percent, respectively, for Black students and 10.2 percent and 7 percent for Hispanic or Latinx students. Among first-generation students, 25.6 percent reported they were unpaid interns and 20.5 percent were paid.

And paid internships tend to pay off, making it more likely for students to land a job after college. According to NACE, students who’d worked as paid interns received an average of 1.12 job offers in 2021, while unpaid interns got an average of 0.85 and those with no internship experience received 0.64 job offers.

………Dwayne Peterson, executive director of career education at the New College of Florida, said during a panel on unpaid internships Thursday that his college has been able to fund about 60 internships over the last two years. Beyond just helping students make connections, the program allowed them to work for pay in arts and humanities fields, which are far more likely to seek unpaid interns than business and engineering employers.

Read the complete article from Inside Higher Education here.